About the production

A modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy’s motifs is a performance preserving all essential elements of the original: it explores the forces of attraction and defies gravity. Quarrels, fights and (dis)harmonious singing in an urban language. About love, fidelity and hopelessness.

“The stage adaptation is harmonic in bridging gaps, it remains true to Shakespeare’s nuclear arcs, and the textual peculiarity is invested into layering of ironic, teasing, even inappropriate additions to situations and dialogue. The language is urbane, recognisable, easy on the ear, not boring or long-winded. /…/ The events, laced with melodic songs, are constantly on the move and on the prowl for lucid comical effects, and perhaps this is the reason that at the hour the doom strikes, when we look at still bodies of the two puppets (in love), the atmosphere of fleetingness and destiny cuts that much deeper. /…/ More than ideal stimulation for potentially growing audience.”

(Delo, 31st May 2011)

About the theatre

Ljubljana Puppet Theatre

Ljubljana Puppet Theatre is the main Slovene theatre for puppet production and for theatre production for children and youth. Theatre runs 6 venues and produces 10 new productions per season, plays more then 700 performances per year – many of them as guest performances on tour, organizes 2 biennial festivals (one each year). Recently we started new programmes of cultural education for youth – we search for inventive approaches to appeal to young audiences. One of our aims is to stimulate different target audiences and educate elderly people – that puppets are not only for children. Our goal is to attract audiences that could be described as gap in theatre statistics – teenagers.

Koper Theatre

Although the tradition of theatre in Koper goes back to the times of the Venetian Republic in the 15th century, Koper Theatre is the second youngest professional theatre in Slovenia. It was established in 2001. Being the only theatre in the coastal region of Slovenia, its programme is praised for the theatre’s stagings of comedies as well as performances for children. Since 2003, the theatre publishes together with Obalne galerije – Coastal Galleries the Gledga magazine on cultural events in the city.

Koper Theatre annually presents a programme of around 6 premières, which include stagings of classical texts as well as contemporary dramatic texts. Some of the theatre’s stagings include the first Slovene presentations of newest dramatic works by national and foreign authors, such as Jeroen van den Berg’s Blowing [Podžig] (2009) and Fausto Paravidino’s La malattia della famiglia M [Bolezen familije M] (2010). The programme also includes dramatisations of Slovene novels and a number of successful stagings of comedy works: Divorce Agency [Agencija za ločitve] (2001), directed by Katja Pegan, Duohtar pod mus!, directed by Vito Taufer and co-produced with Slovene National Theatre Nova Gorica, the first staging of Desa Muck’s Christmas Evening [Božični večer] (2008), etc. The theatre also produces performances for children and youth, often marked by employing different art genres and media, such as Zlatko Krilić’s The Egg [Jajce] (2007), The Girl Behind the Mirror [Deklica za ogledalom] (2009), directed by Yulia Roschina, the dance fairy tale Beauty and the Beast [Lepotica in zver] (2008), etc.